We've got not one, but two, amazing author clips to share today! The first is one of my heroines, Ree Drummond (the Pioneer Woman) on the Today Show. With some help from Al Roker, Ree makes her famous "evil" cinnamon rolls, loaded up with plenty of butter and gooey maple icing. Check out the clip here, which includes the recipe. If anything can beat the morning frost, it's these rolls. I dare you not to salivate watching them.
Next up! We absolutely love Craig Ferguson, even though he thinks a book is "kind of like a blog, but interesting." ALA favorite Dennis Lehane, who needs no introduction, appeared on Craig's show to chat about Moonlight Mile, the sequel to Gone, Baby, Gone. Enjoy!
In my humble opinion…if you're going to read one fiction title from our Fall 2010 list, Russian Winter is the book. Really. After finishing it a few weeks ago, I've wandered around aimlessly, through Charlotte Bronte's Villette and some non-fiction titles–unfortunately, nothing can compete with the transformative, enveloping power of Daphne Kalotay's debut novel. Russian Winter tells the story of Nina Revskaya, an aging ballerina who is auctioning off her jewelry in modern-day Boston. Divided by skillfully-placed auction cards, Russian Winter swerves deftly between Boston and Moscow, evoking the beauty of the Bolshoi and the terror of life under Stalin. The novel is literary but wonderfully accessible–out of everything on our Fall list, this is a book I can wholeheartedly recommend to most of my friends, even with their very diverse tastes in fiction. For more information on Russian Winter, check out my presentation of the title from ALA last month. Happy reading!
Roughly 8,000 librarians attended the American Library Association’s Midwinter conference in Boston.
HarperCollins had a great show: 11 authors including one unforgettable performance by Adriana Trigiani who won the ALA’s Reading List Awards in the Women’s Fiction category for Very Valentine (now out in paperback!). Watch this:
This video went out everywhere. By the next day it was on every major library site including Library Journal’s and the American Library Association’s.
For you non-librarians, the Midwinter conference is where committees meet to determine winners of various book awards. Harper snagged quite a few this time around.
The Reading List awards outstanding genre fiction in 8 categories. We had winners in 3 of those categories as well as a few runner ups:
Historical Fiction – Winner Agincourtby Bernard Cornwell
The Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers selection list suggests books that teens, ages 12-18, will pick up on their own and read for pleasure; it is geared to the teenager who, for whatever reason, does not like to read. We picked up four of these:
